CHAPTER I.
FIRST SENSATIONS.
Dublin.
Hardly have you set foot on the quay at Kingstown, than you feel on an altogether different ground from England. Between Dover and Calais the contrast is not more striking. Kingstown is a pretty little place, whose harbour is used by the steamers from Holyhead, and whither Dublin shopkeepers resort in summer. Half a century back, it was only a fishermen’s village of the most rudimentary description. But George IV., late Prince Regent, having done that promontory the honour to embark there when leaving Ireland, the place became the fashion. In memory of the glorious event, the citizens of Dublin raised on that spot a pyramid which rests on four cannon balls, and bears on its top the royal crown with the names of all the engineers, architects, captains, and harbour officials who had anything to do with the business. Villas soon sprang up round it, and from that time Kingstown went on thriving. A splendid pier bent round upon itself like a forearm on its humerus, makes it the safest harbour in Ireland, and the railway puts it in communication with Dublin in twenty minutes. It is the Portici of a bay that could vie with the Bay of Naples, did it boast its Vesuvius and sun, and did not the shoals which form its bottom get often bare and dry at low tide.
You land then at Kingstown, early in the morning after a four hours’ crossing, having started the evening before by the express from Euston Station. And immediately you feel that you are no longer in England. The language is the same, no doubt, though talked with a peculiar accent or brogue. The custom-house officers are English; so are the policemen and redcoats who air themselves on the quay; but the general type is no longer English, and the manners are still less so. Loud talk, violent gesticulation, jokes and laughter everywhere; brown hair, sparkling dark eyes: you could imagine you are at Bordeaux or at Nantes.
The guard who asks for your ticket, the very train you get in, have something peculiar, undefinable, thoroughly un-English. The old lame newspaper-man who hands you The Irish Times or the Freeman’s Journal at the carriage-door, indulges witticisms while giving you back your change, which not one of Mr. Smith’s well-conducted lads ever permits himself along a British line. As for the passengers they are more un-English than anything else. This lady with the olive complexion and brown hair, may be termed an English subject; but for all that she has not probably one globule of Anglo-Saxon blood in her veins. That gentleman in the grey suit has evidently an English tailor, but the flesh-and-bone lining of his coat is of an altogether different make. As for the little man in black who is curling himself cosily in the corner opposite to you, not only is he unmistakeably a Roman Catholic priest, but you must positively hear him talk, to give up the idea that he is a Breton just out of the Saint Brieux Seminary. High cheek-bones, bilious complexion, small tobacco-coloured eyes, lank hair, nothing is missing from the likeness.
Here is Dublin. The train takes us to the very heart of the town, and there stops between a pretty public garden and the banks of the Liffey. The weather is cool and clear. Inside the station cabs and cars are waiting for travellers and their luggage. Waiting, not contending eagerly for their patronage as they do in London, where any possible customer is quickly surrounded by half-a-dozen rival drivers. “Hansom, sir?... Hansom, sir?” The Dublin cabman is more indolent. He keeps dozing on his seat or leisurely gossiping with his mates. “Why trouble oneself for nothing? The traveller knows how to call for a cab, I suppose!” So speaks the whole attitude of these philosophers in the Billycock hats.
This, however, will not prevent their being as unscrupulous as any of their fellow-drivers in any part of the globe, when it comes to settling the fare. “How much?” “Five bob.” On verification you find that two shillings is all the rogue is entitled to. You give the two shillings, he pockets them and rattles away laughing. The job was a failure; no more.
Dublin is a big city, thickly populated, crossed by wide thoroughfares, provided with fine public gardens and splendid parks, which are here called greens, and adorned with an extraordinary number of statues. Its traffic and industry are important: visibly, this is a capital. More than a capital; the focus of a nationality. Everything in the streets proclaims it: sign-boards, monuments, countenances, manners. Those marble statues you see at every step are the effigies of the patriots who fought for the rights of Ireland. That palace with the noble colonnade, in the heart and finest part of the town, is the very building where the Irish Parliament, abolished in 1800 by the Act of Union, held its assemblies. Now-a-days the Bank directors meet in the room where once met the representatives of the nation. But they seem to have been careful not to change anything in the general arrangement, in case it was wanted to-morrow for some Assemblée Constituante. You may enter it: the door is open for every one. On the right you see what was the House of Lords, a rectangular hall with an open ceiling, historic hangings, and the statue of some royalties. On the left, the House of Commons. Here, mahogany counters stand in place of the members benches, and where sounded once the clash of argument, you hear now the tinkling of gold coins.